Donald Trump shares more than Republican politics with Fox News honcho and "great guy" Roger Ailes - and it may be why Fox went easy on Trump after he made sexist attacks on Fox host and debate moderator Megyn Kelly.

Ailes biographer Gabriel Sherman reported many instances of Ailes' sexism in the book, "The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country." A few examples, via Media Matters:

Sherman wrote of Ailes' inspiration for the afternoon Fox News program The Five:

Years later at Fox News, Ailes would talk fondly about his theatrical experience. "Whenever he can, he gets into the conversation that he produced Hot l Baltimore," a senior Fox executive said. Creating the Fox News afternoon show The Five, Ailes found his inspiration on the stage. "He said, 'I've always wanted to do an ensemble concept,'" a close friend said. "He said, 'I wanted a Falstaff, and that's Bob Beckel. I need a leading man, and it's Eric Bolling. I need a serious lead and that's Dana Perino. I need a court jester and it's Greg [Gutfeld], and I need the leg. That's Andrea Tantaros." [The Loudest Voice in the Room, pg 95-96]

and

In 1994, Ailes appeared on the radio show of shock jock and former Fox Business host Don Imus and made sexual and sexist remarks about two of his female hosts.  

Before it was over, Ailes skewered his own employees. He joked that Mary Matalin and Jane Wallace, hosts of CNBC's Equal Time, were like "girls who if you went into a bar around seven, you wouldn't pay a lot of attention, but [they] get to be tens around closing time."

[...]

Jane Wallace didn't appear in any news stories defending Ailes. "He had no right to say something like that," she later said. "He was our boss. It was completely sexist. It was disgusting. It was outrageous. I thought it was a hideously awful thing to say." But she, too, didn't make it an issue with Ailes. "I didn't say so out loud, I was working for the guy." A few weeks later, however, Wallace quit to host her own show on FX, the start-up cable network owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. [The Loudest Voice in the Room, pg 153]

More examples can be found at Media Matters.

Before he buried the hatchet with Fox, Trump slut shamed Megyn Kelly, called her “a bimbo” and suggested she was having her period when she called out his sexism during last week’s Republican candidates’ debate. But despite the fact that Trump's "period" remark got him uninvited by Fox News contributor Erick Erickson from his influential conservative confab, Fox barely covered Trump's attacks on Kelly (or her co-moderators Bret Baier and Chris Wallace).

Maybe that's because Ailes might have said the same things.

Trump caricature by DonkeyHotey